Tuesday, August 2, 2011, 9:37 pm
Strange bedfellows
If one was making a statement about the bombings and island massacre that left scores — mostly teenagers — dead in Norway last month, which would be more offensive?
A) Comparing the murdered teenagers to the Hitler Youth
B) Comparing the slaughter to what fast-food restaurants do ever day to animals
The first statement was made by right-wing commentator Glenn Beck on his radio program.
“There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth, or whatever,” Beck said. “I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.” (Glad you asked.)
The second was made by none other than Steven Patrick Morrissey during a concert in Warsaw.
“We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 dead,” Moz reportedly said. “Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried shit every day.”
It’s hard to imagine Beck and Morrissey on the same side of any controversy — not that they are here. But both were criticized — Beck by Jewish groups and others and Morrissey by (former?) fans and one music blogger who called him “a miserable hateful man” — for their statements on the same topic.
It’s hard not to be at least a little off-put by Beck’s statement, made on nationally syndicated radio, likening dead teenagers to members of the Hitler-Jugend because they were at a political camp and seemed to be engaged in, like, politics. Novel concept. And it’s hard not to be at least a little suspicious that Beck made the comment because the camp was for members of a center-left party.
Like Beck, Morrissey has never held his tongue — in lyrics (“her very lowness with her head in a sling — I’m truly sorry, but it sounds like a wonderful thing“) or anywhere else — though I question whether Moz and Beck are both following the Ann Coulter playbook or the former genuinely doesn’t care.
One commenter on the NME wrote: “No-one else in the music industry or any other industry would dare be this outrageous, he mightn’t look like it but he’s the last remnants of punk, he says what he wants, he doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks.”
Indeed, Morrissey backed up his comments in a statement on True To You.
“The comment I made onstage at Warsaw could be further explained this way: Millions of beings are routinely murdered every single day in order to fund profits for McDonalds and KFCruelty, but because these murders are protected by laws, we are asked to feel indifferent about the killings, and to not even dare question them,” he wrote. “If you quite rightly feel horrified at the Norway killings, then it surely naturally follows that you feel horror at the murder of ANY innocent being. You cannot ignore animal suffering simply because animals ‘are not us.’”
Comparing a massacre and a bombing to killing animals is hard for many people to accept. That’s logical enough. Most people aren’t vegetarian or vegan. They (me included) eat meat. But for an animal activist, particularly one with a microphone and a penchant for letting everyone from Margaret Thatcher to animal researchers have it, it’s almost expected.
Then again, it’s expected from Beck too.
A or B? Viva hate?
